


Promise Me the Moon and Stars

by Arukou



Series: Words Do Not Deeds Make [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Amputation, Author is not a doctor, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical Trauma, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 05:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3344726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arukou/pseuds/Arukou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three agonizing weeks of radio silence is rarely a good sign. It's even worse when someone finally calls it in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promise Me the Moon and Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to [The Captain America Guarantee](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2727098). Not required reading for this one, but you'll probably get a little confused toward the end if you haven't read it.
> 
> Special thanks to the denizens over on the Cap-IronMan IRC for helping me flesh out parts of this plot. It would have been a hot mess without their input.

Tony’s forty hours into a work binge when Clint comes down into the workshop. Six cups of coffee and a smoothie are fueling him and he’s probably still got another ten hours before he’ll drop with exhaustion, which is exactly what he’s after. In an empty bed, he hasn’t been able to find any rest at all. He wakes in the early morning hours with nightmares and cold sweats, reaching for a person who isn’t there and settling for the jangling promise in the warm metal around his neck instead. It’s been three long weeks of radio silence, and Tony just can’t take it anymore. Working until he drops is the only way he can manage to get even a few minutes of sleep. He fingers the dog tags around his neck as Clint approaches, taking comfort in their presence, in the way they clink against each other.  
  
“We got word,” the sniper says, and Tony is instantly wired, every nerve on fire, because Clint’s voice is tight as his bowstring. He turns, already prepared to head into action, to rescue, to fight, to move, to do anything besides sit here in his lab, day in and day out, just fucking waiting.  
  
A second glance brings Tony back to stillness because Clint’s got his hands up in a clear gesture of Hold on a second, though his shoulders and spine are saying, “run, fight, protect”. “Nat’s on the wire. She says they’re en route from Mongolia. Probably they’re gonna have to lay over somewhere until the Bus can pick them up.”  
  
Tony can see it in Clint’s eyes, in the way they’re carefully blank. Something’s wrong. He can already feel his heart in his throat, tight and constricting and pumping twice as fast as it should.  
  
“What happened?”  
  
The sniper flinches and lowers his hands. “They got Barnes, but…”  
  
“But what?” His voice is too loud in the lab, too sharp and brittle. He can hear the whir of DUM-E’s wheels behind him, feel the weight of the claw on his shoulder, as though the bot is bracing him should he fall.  
  
“Steve…it’s bad Tony.”  
  
“No.” White noise is roaring in his ears, deafening and unbearable, growing in depth and volume until Tony is drowning in it. His knees buckle and he’s suddenly glad that his chair is to his left, his bot behind him, because he can’t fall. Not now.  
  
“He’s alive,” Clint hastens to add. “But Barnes was running a mission in a Hydra base, and the fighting was vicious. They were in an unstable building. Everything came down on all of them. Nat says Steve’s in critical condition. Comatose. I…she gave Bruce the full list of injuries. It’s…”  
  
“How long ’til they get there?” Tony says between gritted teeth, fingers white-knuckled on the chair back.  
  
“The Bus is already in motion. May says she can get to them in six hours. From there, they’re going to rush him to the SHIELD base in Singapore. The med team is already prepping for him.”  
  
“Tell them I’m coming.”  
  
“Tony, I don’t…” Clint pauses, because he’s been where Tony is, desperate to get to an injured teammate. And he’s not about to stop the inventor from running off. Instead he nods and steps forward. His hand is warm on Tony’s shoulder, grip strong, solid, reassuring. “He’ll make it. If seventy years in the Arctic didn’t put him down, a bunch of Hydra goons and a rickety building sure as hell ain’t gonna stop him.”  
  
Tony wants to smile, wants to believe Clint, but all he can manage is a noise that might be a chuckle or might be a sob. He doesn’t stop to think about it. He’s already stepping into his changing room, putting on the undersuit. May’s going to have Steve to Singapore inside of eight hours and Tony is going to be there waiting for them.  


* * *

  
  
JARVIS plots a course for Singapore without speaking a word, and Tony almost wishes that the AI would give him a distraction. He hadn’t stayed long enough to hear what must be a veritable laundry list of Steve’s injuries, and he almost regrets his haste because all he can do is imagine the kind of force necessary to incapacitate a super soldier. They’ve done studies, Bruce and him. Steve’s bones, muscle fiber, skin, everything is durable and honed and nearly impossible to stop with average human force. For Steve, a punch from a non-enhanced human might send him reeling with the momentum, but the actual damage is almost negligible. Add on his accelerated healing, and it would seem nothing can keep him down for long. But that’s before other meta-humans are added to the equation, before Hydra sends out legions of its new AIM-engineered biosoldiers, before tons upon tons of steel and brick come down.  
  
He’s desperate for a distraction as visions of blood and shattered bones, ruptured organs and fading pulses dance behind his eyelids. “Tunes, JARVIS. Something angry,” he demands, and the noise of Rob Zombie fills up just enough of his brain that he can focus on flying the suit. Just enough of his brain that the blood fades into his peripheral vision.  
  
Natasha calls him four hours into his flight, looking haggard and haunted, brittle in a way Tony’s never seen before. Her face is clear of dirt and grime, but there are darker patches on her uniform, stains he tries not to dwell on. “He’s stable,” she says, and he is so grateful that she never beats around the bush with her teammates. Just behind her he can see a SHIELD agent, one of Coulson’s babies, working on someone partially hidden by a curtain.  
  
“Is he conscious?”  
  
“Too much blood loss, even for his system. He passed out while we were still getting out.”  
  
Tony wants to ask for details, to understand what it is that happened, what could possibly bring Steve crashing down. But he can’t even speak past the lump in his throat. The agent behind Natasha shifts, reaching for a different tool, and blood is up to her elbows. He must make some noise, because Natasha turns abruptly, getting the medical table out of his sight line. Now he’s looking at Barnes behind her, slumped in a corner, eyes dead and haunted. The metal arm is crumpled in on itself, stained with blood and dirt and dust and bent so that it hooks behind his back rather than in front. His shoulder port is bleeding freely, a trickle dripping down from the collarbone anchor. Almost before Tony can process what he’s seeing, Natasha turns again slightly, until it’s just the bulkhead behind her.  
  
His brain is functioning much too slowly for all this, exhaustion and hunger and dehydration catching up with him in one pressing ball of tension. Tony feels a maelstrom of emotions so convoluted and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever manage to pick the threads apart again, and closes his eyes for a moment. This time he knows he whimpers aloud, because when he opens his eyes again, Natasha’s careful mask has cracked a little, a faint line appearing near her nose, as telling as any thunderous frown. “Are you safe to fly?” she says after a moment, and for the first time he realizes that she’s got a sling on, her right arm pulled tight into her chest. He chokes, red in his eyes, copper in his nose, and damn it damn it damn it the last thing he needs is a fucking panic attack. “JARVIS, bring up schematics for the new arc reactor plant.”  
  
“Sir, those schematics are…”  
  
“Do it!” he bites, screams, his voice too loud in the confines of his helmet. Natasha’s still on screen, her video feed relegated to a corner as blue lines in black space fill his vision. He forces his mind to machines and metal, mathematics and energy outputs. There’s a flaw in the outer casing, a place where the reactor could rupture under the right circumstances. He shuffles variables in his mind, trying desperately to get his breathing under control. “The…the casing,” he says, voice trembling and sweat dripping down his temples. “We…can we try a ceramic shell? Act as an insulator, diffuse any charge build-up in the air around the reactor. Run…mock up…wait. Run numbers with glass ceramics, hydroxyapatite, and silicon nitride. And throw in silicon carbide for the hell of it. Run at 3, 5, and 8 millimeters and let me know how it goes.”  
  
Natasha is still waiting, that line at her nose still sharp against her porcelain face, but his breathing has evened out a bit and he doesn’t feel like he’s eight seconds away from vomiting in the suit.  
  
“I’ll make it,” he tells her, picking up the conversation right where they left off.  
  
She nods shortly and glances to the side, in the direction of the gurney. “We’re three and a half hours out. Are you going to beat us there?”  
  
“I’m two hours from Singaporean airspace. I’ll be at the hospital waiting for you.”  
  
“Hold it together, Stark.”  
  
He huffs, a corner of his mouth quirking even under the weight of all the stress. “Wouldn’t want to disappoint my favorite spider.”  
  
She lifts one elegant eyebrow, but her eyes dart to the gurney again. Her poker face is nothing if not masterful as she says, “I’ll see you soon.” The feed cuts off, but not before Tony hears the whine of a heart monitor beeping far too quickly, the faint shout of someone in the background.  
  
“He’s crashing!”  
  
Tony’s glad she’s not there anymore, because it means only JARVIS hears when he screams into his helmet, a violent denial at the sky. The suit drops as he forgets himself, curling inward to the limits of the joints. He’s traveling over Mach 2 and the jolt to his stomach and inner ear presses black against his eyeballs, sends his brain and body spinning before his AI takes over and corrects.  
  
“Sir,” JARVIS is saying, voice even but insistent. “Sir. Sir. Sir. Please respond, sir. If you continue, I’ll be forced to make emergency landfall in Guam. Sir. Sir.”  
  
“Keep going,” Tony grits out, tears on his face.  
  
The AI wisely holds his metaphorical tongue and evens out the flight, bringing them back up to altitude.  
  
“He’s not dead,” the inventor whispers fiercely. “He’s not.”  
  
Again, JARVIS is silent.  


* * *

  
  
Tony arrives at the hospital in Singapore forty minutes ahead of the Bus, touching down on the helipad with less than his usual finesse. A wave of exhaustion sends him stumbling a little, but he manages to keep himself upright. As per Coulson’s usual efficiency, there’s already an agent waiting for him, complete with black suit and sunglasses. She nods to him as he approaches, her stance relaxed into parade rest. “Mr. Stark. Welcome to Singapore. I’m Agent Yue-lang Loh. I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”  
  
“You and me both,” he mutters. He doesn’t raise the faceplate, because he doesn’t want her to see the blotchiness on his face, the dried trail of snot he hasn’t be able to wipe away. Nonetheless, he takes her hand when she offers it and gives a perfunctory shake. “Is there anywhere I can…”  
  
“Of course. Right this way. We’ve already prepared a private suite for Captain Rogers, complete with all the medical supplies we thought we might need for a meta-human.”  
  
He can recognize she’s trying to placate him, but honestly, all he can imagine are materials proven to hold Steve. Heavy steel binding cuffs that span the length of his forearms. Elephant tranquilizers that barely put him under for more than ten minutes. Sounds played at such a high decibel level that they bring Steve to his knees. Tony’s seen it all and more in battles and SHIELD records, and none of it soothes his frantic mind.  
  
Agent Loh leads him down two floors to a high-end private suite and shows him to a medium-small bathroom where he can strip off the armor in peace. JARVIS initiates the disengage sequences and metal detaches with decisive clicks, tiny repulsors easing its descent to the floor. “Put it in rest mode,” he mutters as he turns to the mirror.  
  
His face is a mess, ruddy and sticky with sweat, tears, and snot. He undoes the zippers around the wrists of the undersuit and pulls away the glove attachments, dunking his hands into lukewarm tap water so he can scrub away any evidence of his breakdown. The water makes him feel slightly more human, but even once he’s dried his face off, his cheeks remain blotchy, and the circles under his eyes are damning. Now that he’s not in the air anymore, exhaustion hits him like a sucker punch. He’s been awake for nearly fifty hours, and he hasn’t eaten or drunk anything for about six. It’s almost as bad as the condition he was in just after New York, when nights blurred into days and panic was always waiting in the wings to consume him.  
  
“Mr. Stark?” Agent Loh calls from the other side of the door. “ETA fifteen minutes.”  
  
“Be out in a minute.” He switches the tap to cold with middling results, and splashes his face. The tepid water does little to wake him, but hopefully it will be enough to tide him over until Steve is on the ground. He straightens too quickly and briefly, his vision blacks out, blood pressure low with the lack of water. A tense moment braced against the counter lets him recover his balance, but bright white lights are dancing in front of his eyes. Blinking, he turns to the door, steps out more or less presentable and functioning, and flashes the agent a brittle smile, a press smile.  
  
Agent Loh looks him over critically, her dark eyes sharp and intuitive. “I’m given to understand you don’t know the extent of Captain Rogers’ injuries.”  
  
“Other than massive blood loss, no,” he says. She’s got a clipboard in hand now, and suddenly his brain flashes to Pepper, to her elegant lines silhouetted against the New York skyline and her unerring efficiency. He blinks once, twice, to clear the image, and in that time Agent Loh has moved forward and taken his wrist.  
  
“Mr. Stark,” she’s saying, squeezing gently. “Mr. Stark?”  
  
“Sorry…I…continue.”  
  
She looks at him again, her eyes knowing and suspicious, but she steps away. “I was just asking if you’d like to know the full list of injuries. So as not to be shocked when you see him.”  
  
“Shocked? Why would I…he’s still alive, right?” But he promised, Tony nearly says aloud, his hand going automatically to the dog tags under the neoprene. Panic is sour at the back of his throat, just waiting for an opportunity to strike. He heaves in a shaking breath, eyes darting to the air conditioning unit in the ceiling. Silently, he starts ticking off ways to make it more energy efficient. Cellulose evaporates. Carbon micro-particles. Metal-organic frameworks. Those might be useful for cooling in the suit. Note to JARVIS. Additional possible applications. Hydrogen storage. See also, refining hydrogen engines. Agent Loh is shaking him again.  
  
“Mr. Stark, if you don’t respond I may be forced to remove you from the situation.”  
  
His shoulders seize in a tight knot. “That won’t be necessary,” trying his damnedest for the voice he used to use in the board room, the one that told the directors to sit down and shut up because who was the fucking CEO of this company? Not them. Agent Loh merely blinks and fixes him with a laser-guided gaze. “Mr. Stark, if I feel it is in the best interests of both you and Captain Rogers, I will happily haul you kicking and screaming from this room like a toddler.”  
  
“Great. Coulson 2.0,” he mumbles, swiping a hand over his face, wincing at the way his skin feels too tight.  
  
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she says, stepping back. “Now, for the last time, would you like to hear the complete list of Captain Rogers’ injuries or not.”  
  
Tony legs wobble and buckle, energy draining away from him in one horrible gust, like air being sucked away to form vacuum. “Lay it on me,” he says, slumping into the nearest chair. The agent give him one last critical glance, but she flips a sheet of paper and begins reading in a clinically neutral voice.  
  
“Right arm crushed from humerus to phalanges by debris, severe muscle damage, multiple fractures, shattered wrist, severed brachial artery.” Tony grits his teeth and puts one hand over his eyes. “Grade II concussion.” There’s a ringing in Tony’s ears, faint but growing louder. “Lacerations to the right torso from rock and glass debris. Internal bleeding in the abdomen, perforated organs, unspecified.” The sour taste is back again, stronger than before. “Two cracked ribs.” His body is shaking, almost throwing him from his seat. He looks up, meets Agent Loh’s eyes for a split second, and then he’s up, rushing out the door of the suite. There are other SHIELD agents there guarding the entrance, and they are not, for better or worse, caught off guard. One snags Tony by the bicep and the other is quick to latch on to his torso, pinning his other arm. He can barely hear anything over the feverish whine in his ears, but he does manage to hear Agent Loh saying “Sedate him.” Black envelops him, and he’s unsure whether he should be welcoming it like a lover or fighting it like the devil.

 

* * *

  
  
There’s a rhythmic beeping in his ear, one he’s learned to loathe in his time as an Avenger. Regardless of whether it’s his heartbeat or one of his teammates’, he knows that that sound means he’s failed in some way. Someone is hurt, hospitalized, because Iron Man wasn’t fast enough, didn’t anticipate enough, didn’t prepare enough. He groans, opens his eyes slightly, and shuts them again as fluorescent lighting pierces his skull, presses needles into his brain.  
  
“Tony.”  
  
Pepper to his right.  
  
“‘Bout time, you drama queen.”  
  
Clint to his left.  
  
“Did someone get the number of the bus that hit me?” he growls, trying for levity and winding up somewhere near crotchety geezer. “Fuck,” he murmurs more gently, raising a hand to cover his eyes. And then he remembers. “Steve!” he says, sitting up, pulling the cords of his heart monitor with him. His left arm twinges and he looks down to see an IV piercing his skin.  
  
Pepper’s hands are on his shoulders almost immediately, easing him back, fingers firm with her ineffable strength. “He’s stable. Still not awake.”  
  
“He’s alive?” Tony says, not quite able to trust, words alone. He’s a scientist; he needs evidence.  
  
Clint brandishes his smart phone and flips it around so the screen is nearly touching Tony’s nose. “Nat said you’d need proof, you big baby.” The marksman is trying to be light, but Tony can hear a terrifying edge in his voice, something he would have never noticed six months ago but which now rings loud in his ears. On the screen, Natasha leans into frame with Steve, whose face is a mass of purple and red bruising, his nose crooked at a terrible angle. In spite of the gravity of the situation, she’s smirking and brandishing a sharpie as though she’s about to do something dastardly to his battered face.  
  
Tony inhales once, exhales, and then breathes in again, hating the way his chest shakes with stress and fear. Then he slaps on his best “I am a smarmy asshole” grin and says, “Did you draw a penis on my boyfriend’s face?”  
  
“Me? I didn’t draw anything. I am innocent of all charges,” Clint says, holding up his hands in a position of surrender. “Can’t vouch for Nat, though.”  
  
Tony covers his eyes again, sinking down into the stiff hospital bed mattress. After a moment, he slides his hand down, using the moment to surreptitiously see if they removed the dog tags. The metal clinks reassuringly under his fingers and he sees Clint’s sharp gaze on his chest, the sniper’s face thoughtful and a little wary. The sheets crinkle with too much starch, and Tony wrinkles his nose. “I want to see him.”  
  
“After your lecture,” Pepper says, and he glances up to see her face tighten with ire. “Dehydrated and severe exhaustion, Tony. You shouldn’t have been flying in that condition, especially not such a long journey.”  
  
“I needed to see him,” Tony grits, turning to face Clint, whose censure isn’t nearly as severe. There’s something to be said for the archer’s reassuring presence, given that he is just as likely as Tony to be chewed out for disregarding physical limits and injuries on any given day.  
  
“And I’m sure Steve will be thrilled to learn you ran yourself into the ground to do so.”  
  
“I wasn’t…I’m not…Fuck, Pep, it wasn’t like I was planning to fly out with a sleep deficit. Emergencies happen.”  
  
“Which is why you need to take better care of yourself! What if you’d needed to save the world today? Or disassemble a bomb? Could you do that in this condition? I…” Pepper bites her tongue and reels in her rising temper. “This is why we’re not a couple anymore,” she mumbles as she pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’m confiscating your tablet. You will rest. You will recuperate. You will not let yourself fall into this state again or there will be hell to pay from more than just me, and you know it. I’m going to…go check on Steve.” She stands abruptly and speeds out the door, brushing past a doctor on her way out.  
  
The doctor, an older woman with iron gray in her hair and in her eyes, looks Tony up and down and frowns at her chart. “I’m Dr. Sim, Mr. Stark. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” There’s a faint lilt in her voice, but he doesn’t think her clipped tones are from her Singaporean accent alone. “I must say, for a world-class superhero, you do not take world-class care of your body.”  
  
“I’m fine,” he mumbles. Something in her stern gaze reminds him of Jarvis, the way the butler would fix him with a look of utter disappointment that cowed Tony far better than any screaming session with his father ever could.  
  
“Indeed,” she says after a moment, her razor sharp eyebrow lifting ever so eloquently. “In any case, we’ve treated you for your dehydration, and the tranquilizer the orderly stuck you with put you out for seven hours, so your exhaustion should be less severe. How are you feeling?”  
  
She brandishes a penlight in his direction and flashes it in each of his eyes, as he resists the urge to sneer at her. “Fine. Right as rain. If I could just see Captain America now, that’d be much appreciated.”  
  
Her mouth pinches and she leans back out of his personal space. “I’m afraid Captain Rogers is in surgery at the moment. It’ll be several hours before you can see him.”  
  
“Surgery?” Tony says, eyes darting to Clint. The archer looks equally bewildered, though there’s something like dawning horror behind his eyes.  
  
“I thought we were waiting to see what would happen?” the younger man says carefully, his voice giving nothing away.  
  
“The limb went necrotic. Dead tissue cannot be revived, Mr. Barton, no matter how miraculous the super soldier serum may be. If we leave it is as, Captain Rogers’ life will be placed in unnecessary danger, and we the hospital do not feel comfortable waiting any longer. Agent Romanov agreed to the operation.”  
  
Dr. Sim looks down at her chart again, and then back at Tony. “I’m recommending one week of rest, Mr. Stark. I’m told your friends will enforce it, in spite of your disregard for doctor’s orders. No work, no strenuous physical activity, and lots of sleep and liquids. No coffee.”  
  
“No…” Tony’s brain hiccups, vacillating between Steve and a medical order that can’t possibly be followed, but his warring mind quickly chooses the more important of the two. He turns to Clint and says, “Tell me everything.”  


* * *

  
  
The heart monitor is painfully slow, barely forty beats a minute. They’ve assured him that it’s baseline for a sleeping Steve, and he knows from the Avengers’ own medical testing that that’s true, but watching it now, waiting for the rhythmic ping, is torturous. The silence between each peak stretches into what feels like hours, and Tony divides his attention between the blipping line and Steve’s chest, which rises and falls hardly at all. He looks at the bandages and looks away, because the very sight of it sends his thoughts ass over teakettle.  
  
“You must not blame yourself, my friend.” For a man who normally fills a room with his voice, Thor can speak surprisingly softly when he needs to. Tony flinches, hunching his shoulders deeper into the hospital robe. “This is the risk we all take when we don our armor and burnish our weapons.”  
  
“Which is why we have a team,” Tony hisses, gripping Steve’s left hand just a little tighter, watching as the skin wrinkles beneath his fingers before he eases up. “We’re supposed to be there for each other, save each other from…from this.”  
  
He gestures expansively to the place where Steve’s forearm is not, to the stump swaddled in bandages. Tony’s breath rattles in his throat, just the wrong side of a sob, and he slumps forward, pressing his forehead to Steve’s hand. “If even just one more of us had been there…”  
  
“I find that the word ‘if’, when conflated with the past, often leads only to despair. What is done is done. It is how we move forward from this moment that will define us.”  
  
“We?”  
  
“Surely you do not think yourself alone in your grieving. We have all shouldered blame for this injury to Steven, whether deserved or not. I feel equally as responsible for his state. Do you hold me accountable?”  
  
“No, of course not, I…”  
  
“Then perhaps lessen the burden you have placed on your own shoulders. Or if you cannot, share it with the rest of your team. Remember that you are not alone in this.”  
  
Thor’s palm is heavy and warm on Tony’s shoulder and unthinking, the inventor leans back into it, resting his head against Thor’s massive rib cage. “Why hasn’t he woken up yet?” Tony whispers after a moment, squeezing Steve’s hand again as though it will bring the soldier back to him. “They said that the damage is mending. All the bleeding, he’s got all his blood back. The concussion isn’t that bad.” He promised, the thought returns, as stubborn as ever. It’s stupid, childish, that Tony is clinging to it, but if he can’t trust Captain America’s promise, he’s not entirely sure what he can trust.  
  
“I fear Steven’s mind is far afield. He has never been so grievously injured before. And I sense that his body is still tired from its work.”  
  
“I wonder if he’s in pain?”  
  
“Natalia spoke to me on this manner. She said Dr. Banner sent a special recipe, some mixture of medicines he feels will ease any pain our Captain might be in.”  
  
“Is there something…some Asgardian thing…” The idea of relying on alien technology of all things, makes Tony shudder, but if they could ease Steve’s pain, could regenerate the lost limb…  
  
“I never had talent for healing. That was my lady mother, who sadly has sailed to the halls of Valhalla. And I fear my father would not allow healers to venture to Midgard. He…does not look kindly on this world.”  
  
Tony squeezes Steve’s hand again, leaning forward so he can press his lips to the papery skin. Someone knocks on the door, but he doesn’t look back to see who it is.  
  
“Barnes is here.” Natasha’s voice is low and neutral, and he imagines if he turned to look at her, her face would be still as a windless pond. “He’s been asking to see him.”  
  
A tiny, petty part of Tony wants to refuse, wants to tell Barnes to go to the ends of the earth and never show his face again, because without him, Steve would be healthy, laughing, and whole. But Steve wouldn’t want that. Steve would want Tony to be understanding and forgiving and all of the things the inventor rarely knows how to be. “Let him in,” he says roughly, his voice barely audible. Thor, still warm and huge at his back, stiffens and shifts, moving so that he’s partially blocking Tony from view.  
  
There are steps on the tile, shockingly loud against the beeping from the heart monitor. Barnes walks until he’s at the end of the hospital bed, and then stops, facing the window with eyes downcast. His left shirt sleeve hangs empty, the broken metal limb removed to be scrapped or repaired, Tony doesn’t know which. He finds he can’t bring himself to care. Natasha trails in his wake, tense and compact, her arms held loose and ready at her sides as though she’s expecting an explosion at any moment.  
  
An eternity passes in the next sixty seconds, but finally Barnes turns and looks directly at Steve, hard eyes darting over the bed, taking in all the wires and needles and bandages. Tony is hit with the sudden urge to throw himself over Steve, to hide him from view. Instead, he holds the super-soldier’s hand even more tightly, watching as his knuckles turn white with the strain. Thor’s big palm covers his after a moment, urging the fingers loose.  
  
Barnes shudders once, his entire body jagging like he’s hit a live wire, and then he stumbles back into the corner of the room. Tony’s half on his feet, moving to cover Steve, and Thor and Natasha are both advancing, ready to hinder any outbursts of violence. Natasha’s got a taser disk in her hand and is already halfway to throwing it when the soldier collapses onto the floor, knees pulled tightly into his chest. There are tears streaming down his face, and his teeth are bared in a grimace, but he makes absolutely no noise. Even his breathing, which should be loud with stress and sobbing, is bizarrely silent. They all freeze, unsure of what to do or how to respond. The monitor beeps on, steady and blaring in the deathly quiet room.  
  
After a long moment, Tony lowers himself back into the chair, eyes still on the soldier. Thor also backs away, though he remains close enough to act quickly. Natasha bites her lip, a shocking tell of honesty, and then drops into a crouch, her delicate hand on the back of Barnes’ neck.  
  
The man freezes for a moment, piano wire tight, then turns ever so slightly so he can curl behind her knees and hide himself. Tony watches a moment longer, but the raw emotion is almost more than he can bear, far too intimate for a room full of people who barely know this man. He turns his eyes back to Steve’s face and takes a deep breath.  
  
Long minutes stretch between them all, cresting and ebbing tension in a perfect sine wave, until finally Barnes chokes, the sudden noise making Tony jump. He hadn’t heard the other man move, but now the soldier is at Steve’s right side, eyes on the bandaged stump.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, voice a rasp of sandpaper, and even though he’s looking at Steve, Tony has a feeling the words aren’t meant for the super soldier.  
  
“It’s…” Tony swallows once, and bites down on the words because it’s clearly not alright. So he tries again with a little more honesty. “Steve wouldn’t blame you.”  
  
“As if that matters,” Bucky says, bitterness sharp under the rough tears. He reaches out once, smoothes feather light fingers over Steve’s hairline, and then turns and leaves. Tony can’t bear to watch him go. The door clicks shut behind Natasha, and it’s just Thor and Tony and a comatose Steve again.  
  
Thor takes a deep breath and shakes himself once like a lion. There’s something about his alien beauty that immediately warms the room in the wake of the winter soldier, and Tony latches on to that warmth, pulls his robe tighter around himself as though he can trap the heat within.  
  
“That was well done, Anthony.”  
  
Tony shakes his head and curls in a little tighter. “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he grouses, closing his eyes.  
  
“Of course,” Thor says, a smile in his voice. His warm palm lands on Tony’s shoulder one last time, squeezes, and then he’s stepping away. “I will keep watch. These places are not to be trusted. Take rest, Anthony. You are carrying a heavy burden, and none of us will grudge you the sleep.”  
  
Easier said than done, Tony thinks to himself as the door clicks shut again. He opens his eyes to look at Steve’s blue veins, his nearly motionless chest, and then closes them again. He bows until his head is on the bed next to Steve’s hip and fights the urge to cry.  


* * *

  
  
When Tony next wakes, someone, probably Thor, has repositioned him so he’s laying on the hospital bed next to Steve. Even dead to the world, the super-soldier is warm as a stove, and Tony has curled instinctively into his body, feet tucked under a calf and arm insinuated behind his shoulders. There’s a rough blanket over him, but it’s not doing much compared to Steve.  
  
Sam is sitting in the extra chair, book open in his hands. Tony takes a deep breath and considers going back to sleep, but he has to pee, so after a moment he sits up. “Rise and shine,” Sam says, and Tony smirks a little, because outside the window, Singapore’s lights glow orange against the night sky.  
  
He shuffles out of bed and ducks into Steve’s bathroom, taking advantage of the facilities to wash his face and brush his teeth. When he comes back out, Sam’s set aside his book and he’s shifted his chair closer to the bed. He’s looking at Steve and there’s something intense in his face, some burst of emotion that Tony wishes he didn’t recognize so easily. He considers them both for a minute and then says, “Who’d you lose?”  
  
“My wingman,” Sam says without hesitation, eyes flicking to Tony.  
  
“Steve’s not really a wingman kind of a guy.”  
  
“No. He’s more of a ‘follow him to the ends of the earth leader’ type.”  
  
Tony snorts and glances at the clock. One in the morning. He’s been asleep for eight hours and he doubts he’ll manage to nod off again anytime soon.  
  
As though to spite his brain, his body gives a massive yawn, and he bows his head until he hears his neck crack. “I’m gonna get some coffee,” he says after a moment, and turns toward the door.  
  
“No you’re not,” says Sam, voice soft but authoritative.  
  
“I don’t remember anyone making you the boss of me.” Tony means to sound petulant and childish, but instead he just sounds tired.  
  
“Doctor said no coffee, and I am under strict orders to protect you from yourself. How does mint tea sound?”  
  
“Are you fucking kidding me?”  
  
“Do I look like I’m joking?” Sam says, one eyebrow up in sharp question. Tony stares him down for a moment, but his heart’s not quite in it. After a moment, he settles back down on the bed, eyes on Steve’s face. He itches for a tablet, but Pepper apparently meant it when she banned them, because he hasn’t seen a trace of his. He couldn’t even blame her for it.  
  
Sam’s on Steve’s left, which means Tony’s on the right, a place he desperately doesn’t want to be. He doesn’t want to contemplate the white bandages. He doesn’t want to think about the way the doctors have been working Steve’s muscles over with massages and stretches, even though he’s out cold. He doesn’t want to consider the scar tissue, and the accelerated healing that makes it look like Steve’s arm has been gone for weeks instead of days.  
  
He can feel Sam’s sharp gaze on his face, but he doesn’t look up. He lets the guilt wash over him and drag his shoulders down a little.  
  
“Man, I know Steve’s crazy about you, but you are a selfish prick sometimes, you know that?”  
  
“Excuse me?” Tony says, bristling and sharp, ready to expertly rake Sam across the coals with barbed words.  
  
“This isn’t about you,” Sam says shortly, voice low but tone spiked with simmering anger. “This is about him. Fucking drop your guilt and think about what he’s gonna need from you when he wakes up. I’m dead serious. Think about it. Right now.”  
  
Tony opens his mouth to throw back an insult, but something stops him. He glances down at Steve’s face again, looks at the bruises now faded to old yellow and the cuts and scrapes dark, dark red with old scabbing. They’ll probably be gone by tomorrow. For a long time, he says nothing at all, brain churning as he turns over possibilities and probabilities and new and old data alike.  
  
“He’s such a martyr,” Tony finally says, voice barely more than a whisper.  
  
“Go on,” Sam says, not quite as angry now, but still sharp.  
  
“I know what you’re getting at,” Tony says, glancing sideways. “It’s not like I’m going to show this to him.”  
  
“You honestly think he won’t notice?”  
  
Tony thinks about the night Steve left to find Barnes, the way the super-soldier always seems to know what’s going on in Tony’s head, even when Tony himself isn’t so sure. He takes a deep breath in, and exhales it out in one loud puff of air. “What do you suggest?” he says after a moment.  
  
“Talk it out and then let it go. I know you’re feeling guilty because you weren’t there, but you already know this was Steve’s choice. And thinking about ‘what if’ isn’t going to help anyone. You need to be thinking about ‘what now’.”  
  
Tony side-eyes Wilson, looks him up and down, and then a little light clicks on in his head. “You’re saying I need to be thinking about the future.”  
  
“Exactly,” Sam says, and his eyes glint with the hint of a smile, though his lips don’t curl up. Tony glances back down at the stump, and he studies the shape of the muscle, the tension in the deltoid and bicep.  
  
“You are a sneaky, sneaky bastard,” he says after a moment, but he feels lighter than he has since Clint first got the call, since this whole mess started.  
  
“I’ve gotta take what I can. It’s bad enough having this guy speeding by me every morning,” Sam says, hitching his thumb at Steve. “Getting to one-up an Avenger is always a good thing in my book.”  
  
“Don’t let it go to your head.”  
  
“I’m sure Natasha will pop my ego before it gets too big.”  
  
“She does that to everyone. It’s a sign of affection. Now give me your phone.”  
  
“Excuse me.”  
  
“You heard me. Hand it over. I’ve got work to do.”  
  
“Basically you want me to call down the wrath of Pepper. Is that what you’re saying?”  
  
“It’s for a good cause,” Tony says, hand out and fingers curled expectantly.  
  
“You’re more trouble than you’re worth,” says Sam, but he’s grinning as he passes over his smart phone.

 

* * *

  
  
At some point in time Sam leaves, giving only a half-hearted attempt to steal his phone back. Natasha replaces him, but she is blessedly silent and still, almost a part of the scenery rather than an active player in the room. It barely registers in Tony’s mind. He’s got limited processing power with a stock model, but he’s got enough to link up with JARVIS and start sending specifications and ordering fabrication materials, and just barely enough to do rough sketches. JARVIS can fill in the blanks. Around him, the hospital moves on. Nurses come in and check Steve’s blood oxygen and IV bag. They’ve got him on a special nutrient mix to give him all the things his hyper-fast metabolism demands, plus Bruce’s special made cocktail of opiates. The physical therapist stops by in the morning and works Steve’s shoulder over, massaging and stretching tight skin and muscles. Tony briefly rises from his design stupor to watch with sharp eyes, memorizing the movements and exercises. Someone’s going to have to do that for Steve at home, and Tony wants to be that person if he can.  
  
Around 11, Natasha nicks the phone straight from his fingers. He jumps because she was silent as death itself and he never even saw her coming, and then frowns at her. “Give it back.”  
  
“When was the last time you ate?”  
  
“Uh…” His stomach growls on cue, his traitorous body giving him away. “Maybe…yesterday?”  
  
She whacks him on the back of his head, just hard enough to sting. “We’re getting you some food. Come on.”  
  
“But…” his tongue catches because he nearly says ‘Pepper’, and that tells him how exhausted he must still be. He rises then, reluctantly, and follows her out of Steve’s room back to his own hospital suite. Breakfast is waiting under a covered tray and Tony grimaces a little. Rice porridge and chilled ginger tofu, a large bunch of green grapes, and a cup of tea that has cooled in the time it’s been waiting for him.  
  
“You sit down,” Natasha says with sharp authority as she collects the tray. “I’m going to go rewarm this stuff.”  
  
“Give me the phone back.”  
  
“Absolutely not,” she says, smiling like a viper as she slips out the door.  
  
“Evil woman,” he grumbles, but only after he’s sure she’s out of hearing distance. The room is painfully boring, so he snatches the sticky notepad and the pen off of the tiny dressing table and starts writing out the code he’s going to need. He can poach of some of the mechanisms from the suit, but he’s going to need a much larger array for sensory input and if they decide to do a more invasive hookup, he’s going to be coding blind. Unless Barnes’ onboard computers survived their mangling. He might be able to parse from those chips if he’s lucky.  
  
By the time Natasha comes back with steaming tea and porridge, Tony’s lap is covered with sticky notes covered in scrawls of black code, numbers and letters written as finely as he can fit them.  
  
“You’re incorrigible,” she says as she yanks up his bed tray, effectively blocking off his work.  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“Eat, you big baby. It’ll still be there when you’re done.”  
  
Tony wrinkles his nose at the food again, but quietly digs in. If it weren’t for the sharp burn of ginger on his tongue, he would guess he was eating wallpaper paste. “This is possibly the worst breakfast I’ve ever had.”  
  
“We both know that’s not true,” she says, settling back in his guest chair and propping her feet on his bed. Tony glances up, but doesn’t respond.  
  
“Who’s on Steve duty?”  
  
“Bruce.”  
  
“Brucie’s here?”  
  
“He got in last night. We made him sleep before he came.”  
  
“Good. I need to talk to him about the nervous system. I read up what I could, but without my databases, it’s much slower going and…”  
  
“I believe his words would be, ‘I’m not that kind of doctor.’”  
  
“He keeps saying that and yet he keeps fulfilling all our crazy health demands. I’m tempted to start making Star Trek jokes at his expense, but it’s not quite the same. ‘Damn it, Tony, I’m a radiologist and a biochemist, not a neurosurgeon.’”  
  
Natasha smirks and settles deeper into the chair. “You’re right. Doesn’t have the same ring to it.”  
  
Tony eats another spoonful of porridge, grimacing at the texture and then glances back at Natasha. “How’s the arm?”  
  
Her eyes are sharp and guarded. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
  
“You better be taking it easy. I will tell Steve when he wakes up if you’re not taking care of yourself.”  
  
Her lips purse, but she tilts her head down and away. “It’s nothing. Not compared to…”  
  
Tony watches her a moment, and is suddenly reminded how very young she is. How very young both she and Steve are, all things considered. If they were normal people, they might be settling down now, getting married, buying their first houses, having kids. But fate has dealt them a different hand entirely. Instead of suburbia, they sit in hospitals, waiting on downed teammates or having their own injuries mended, commiserating and wondering when the next alien attack will come. He wouldn’t wish this life on anyone, let alone people as good as they are. Natasha caresses her injured arm and snaps Tony back to the present.  
  
“You know,” he says cautiously, “Thor gave me some pretty good advice. Sam, too, but I’m gonna give the credit to Thor.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“He said all the ‘what ifs’ in the world aren’t gonna change what is.”  
  
“Somehow I don’t think that was his phrasing.”  
  
“Whatever. I’ve got the gist of it. My point is,” he says, leaning forward and touching her wrist before he can second-guess himself, “this isn’t your fault. Don’t blame yourself for what happened to Steve.”  
  
Her eyes are wide as he leans back again. “I made the call,” she says suddenly, voice rough and quiet. He waits on her. “Steve…We knew the building was coming down, but I thought we’d have enough time to get the top researcher out for questioning. I thought we could…Everything was coming down so fast. If Barnes hadn’t pulled a steel door on top of us, none of us would have survived. Steve was at the very edge of the door, and he’d already been beat to hell by some of the biosoldiers. I saw him fall, but even as he was going down, he put the shield over me and Barnes. It’s the second time he’s saved me from a collapsing building. And then they told me he’d listed me as his secondary for medical decisions and the arm was necrotic, black all over, Tony, I…”  
  
Natasha’s eyes are dry, but her voice is rough and cracked like she’s just walked the length of the Sahara. There’s something wounded about her, something so terribly fragile hidden among her carbon-steel strength. She turns abruptly and faces his window, Singapore’s vaulting lines sharp against the late morning sun. “More red in the ledger,” she murmurs softly, running her fingers over her injured arm again.  
  
Tony wants to tell her it’s not her fault, but somehow, he doesn’t think the words would hit home. Instead he says, “He knows you’ll pay him back.” After a moment he smirks. “A Romanov always pays her debts.”  
  
She glances sharply at him, but then smirks, her lips a brutal red slash across her face. “I would be a Lannister, wouldn’t I?”  
  
“No. You haven’t got oodles of money. I’d be the Lannister. Plus red and gold. Obvious choice. You’d be…Varys. He’s the one with all the spiders.”  
  
“We should do a marathon,” Clint says from the doorway. “Once Steve wakes up. He keeps saying he’s been meaning to watch it.”  
  
“And who would you be?” Tony asks, as the sniper steps deeper into the room.  
  
“If we’re going by what I can do with a bow, I’m probably that dude who runs around with Lady Stone. But if we’re talking personality, maybe someone like Davos? I’m just a dude. Point me and I’ll shoot what you need me to shoot.”  
  
“You sell yourself short,” Natasha says with a haughty toss of her head.  
  
“Don’t diss Davos. He’s awesome, and an honorable man, which means he’ll probably bite the bullet sooner or later. I like Davos.”  
  
“He bores me,” Natasha says, flicking her fingers dismissively.  
  
Clint returns fire in sign language, hands fluttering gracefully in the sunlight, and Tony polishes off the last of his grapes. He watches their silent exchange, picking out every fifth word or so. He’s been learning on the side for Clint’s sake, but he hasn’t got a lot of time to practice, what with the whole running R&D and saving the world and whatnot. He lets the fluid exchange of their hands lull him until everything gradually fades to black.

 

* * *

  
  
Tony wakes to the dim hallways of the graveyard shift, and at first he’s not quite sure what pulled him from his dreamless sleep. Then fabric rustles to his right and someone groans ever so softly. He looks and Steve is there, sitting in the plastic chair Natasha had previously occupied, eyes blown and face dazed. Tony shoots up, whipping away his blankets and swinging his legs over the side of the bed in one flustered motion.  
  
“Steve! You’re awake! What are you doing out of bed? Do the nurses know you’re…”  
  
The super soldier doesn’t wait for him to finish, lurching into Tony’s chest, his face buried in Tony’s neck. The inventor’s arms come up automatically, taking as much of Steve’s massive weight as he can and guiding him back until they’re both awkwardly collapsed across the hospital bed.  
  
“I had to find you,” Steve whispers, his tongue slurred with the cocktail of drugs he’s been on. “Had to…” Tony looks down and sees that the IV lines have been pulled out, tiny rivulets of dried blood running from needle marks already healed shut. “I came back,” Steve breathes, voice shaking, and Tony feels a horrible chill of guilt, stomach clenching tightly with how desperate Steve looks.  
  
He’s about to respond, to sooth Steve, when the door slams open and Sam rushes in. “Steve!” he cries, but the blonde doesn’t speak. Tony holds him closer, feels the way his muscles contract under his fingers.  
  
Sam catches Tony’s eye, face falling. “I’m so sorry, Tony. I just went to get a coffee and when I came back, the nurses were panicking because he’d gotten up and walked away. His heart monitor tipped them off.” Behind Sam, a young man in green scrubs is waiting anxiously, clearly unsure if he should start urging Steve back to bed or hold off on bothering the superheroes.  
  
“Steve. Baby,” Tony whispers, turning and pressing his lips to Steve’s ear. “You need rest. You’re not healed yet.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Tony,” Steve huffs, and his stump swings, settles over Tony’s sternum and the scar tissue there. The super soldier hisses, yanking his arm back. “I…What happened?”  
  
“I’ll tell you, babe, but only if you go back to bed.”  
  
Steve hesitates a moment, the breath rattling in his throat, but then he nods against Tony’s skin, pushing himself up and away in an ungainly sprawl of limbs. Sam’s there to help him, guiding the taller man onto his feet. Tony stands from his bed and takes Steve’s other side, the injured side, carefully insinuating himself under the stump. “Come on, big guy.”  
  
With gentle words, he and Sam guide Steve back to his room, three nurses orbiting around them like flighty moths. By the time they’ve got him seated on his mattress, his eyes are clearing, the effects of the drugs flushing away as his metabolism picks up the slack. Tony can see the way his gaze flickers down to his bandaged arm and up again, the way his jaw tightens, the way his brow falls and his face wrinkles as he closes his eyes against the sight.  
  
“Captain Rogers,” the nurse says, looking terrified as he steps forward, “shall I…the pain meds…” He gestures helplessly to the IV and the abandoned needle still on the bed.  
  
“Don’t need ‘em,” Steve says through gritted teeth.  
  
“Steve, if you’re in pain…”  
  
“I’d rather have a clear head. I can handle pain. It’s not even that bad,” he says, opening his eyes and giving Tony a tight smile. The nurse looks up and catches both Sam’s and Tony’s eyes, as if he needs secondary confirmation. Tony nods after a moment, and the nurse returns the nod, gathering up the abandoned cords and neatly bundling them.  
  
“You’ve been asleep for a few days, Captain Rogers. Would you like something to eat?” he says as he shifts the monitors into the corner of the room.  
  
Steve nods, still grimacing, as he eases back into the bed, pulling his feet up and flipping the blankets over them. “Sorry to cause you so much trouble. I wasn’t…wasn’t thinkin' right.”  
  
“Not at all, Captain. It’s always stressful waking up in a hospital. I’ll bring you something to eat, and then if it’s alright, I’d like to check you over and have you answer a few preliminary questions for the doctor when he comes in tomorrow.  
  
The nurse darts out the door, and Tony leans forward to flick on the bedside lamp. “How are you feeling?” he asks, feeling dumb even as the question tumbles off his tongue.  
  
Steve considers him for a moment and then says, “Better than scarlet fever, worse than pneumonia.” All three of them guffaw at that and Steve gives Tony and Sam a pained smile.  His eyes fall to his arm again and he looks away just as quickly, his good hand reaching out blindly for Tony. The inventor catches his fingers and squeezes tightly, reassuring as much as he’s capable.  
  
“Do you remember what happened?”  
  
Steve frowns, rubbing his thumb over Tony’s knuckles. “There was…the Hydra biosoldiers…the building was coming down. Bucky, Natasha, did they…”  
  
“They’re both here, too,” Sam says, stepping up and putting a hand on Steve’s knee. Nat hurt her arm, and Bucky’s metal arm is busted to hell, but they’re both alive.”  
  
“Thank god,” Steve hisses, slumping back against his pillows, closing his eyes again. “I didn’t…thank god.” His stump swings useless against his side, and Tony can’t help wondering what he was reaching for.  
  
“You want some water? We can get…”  
  
Steve shakes his head, face tightening with pain. “I fucked up, Tony.  
  
“No, you didn’t,” the inventor says, pulling up Steve’s left hand and pressing his lips to it. “You saved everyone. And this…It’s gonna take more than a little amputation to keep Captain America down, right? And we’re here for you. The whole team. We’re…you’re not dealing with this alone.”  
  
Tony can tell Steve is trying to smile, trying to grin and bear it, but a tear leaks from the corner of his eye and the muscles under the white bandaging are flexing and contracting frenetically. For a moment, Tony’s at a loss, so he slides over onto the bed, pressing his hip up against Steve’s, and wipes the tear away. Distraction. Distract him.  
  
“How’d you find me?” Tony says after a moment, because he wants to take Steve’s mind out of that ruined building and all the brick and mortar coming down around them.  
  
“You mean in the hospital?” Steve says after a moment, teeth gritted.  
  
“Yeah. It’s not like there was a giant neon sign reading ‘Tony Stark, right this way.’”  
  
“Don’t think he needs a sign,” Sam says under his breath, but the comment is lost as Steve shifts restlessly, his grip momentarily becoming unbearable around Tony’s knuckles before it loosens again.  
  
“Dunno,” he says finally. “Just…knew you were close.” Steve’s lips turn up ever so slightly, and he tilts his head toward Tony, opening his eyes a smidge. Then he frowns. “How come you’re in a hospital gown?”  
  
Tony doesn’t blush often, but he can feel a wash of red on his cheeks now. “I…uh…my clothes got dirty and I was sleeping here anyway, so I just borrowed a robe. And a bed.”  
  
“You’re not nearly as good of a liar as you think you are.”  
  
“Am too.”  
  
Steve finds Sam’s gaze and waits, squeezing rhythmically against Tony’s palm, not quite as hard as before, but still tight enough to make the joints groan a little.  
  
“Exhaustion and dehydration. Your boy flew out here in the suit, even though he hadn’t slept for something like two days and hadn’t eaten hardly anything at all.”  
  
The super soldier fixes Tony with a frown, his pink mouth tightening with frustration. “You and I will be having a talk later,” he promises as the nurse clatters back in, bearing a tray of food and a clipboard.  
  
“Yes, we will,” Tony returns, because he’s got things he wants to say, too. Things he should have said before. Steve nods decisively and turns to his meal, tucking into chicken and bok choy with the gusto of a lion at the feast, though his face remains pinched with whatever he’s feeling. Tony watches, and winces. Steve’s coordination with his left is better than most, but at the end of the day, he was always right dominant. The stump swings helplessly with muscle memory, even as the super soldier struggles with his fork, and Steve grimaces until he sees Tony watching. Then he eats like granite, managing his perfectly blank face with terrifying ease, though his shoulders grow tighter and tighter with each muscle movement.  
  
He finishes off all the food in almost no time at all and guzzles a protein shake on top of it. “To rebuild muscle mass,” the nurse had murmured. Tony hits the call-button and the nurse comes back, whisks away the tray, and takes up his clipboard.  
  
“If you don’t mind Captain Rogers,” he says tentatively, pen wavering in his grip.  
  
“Go right ahead.”  
  
“First, if you could please rate your pain on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the worst pain you can imagine.”  
  
Steve’s eyes dart to Tony and Sam, and Sam frowns. “Don’t you dare lie,” he says, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms.  
  
“I don’t lie,” Steve says, breath huffing out through his nose.  
  
“No. You just omit certain truths.” Tony pokes Steve’s left bicep to make his point more sharply. “Tell the nice man everything.”  
  
Steve sighs and begins answering questions, his face growing tighter and tighter the longer it goes on. At last he says, “Is that everything? I’ve gotta use the bathroom.” This seems highly unlikely since he hasn’t drunk any liquids in three days, but after a moment’s hesitation, the nurse nods and scurries out, looking relieved to be going.  
  
“The bathroom, Steve? Really?” Tony says, lips quirking in a half-smile.  
  
“It got rid of ‘im, didn’t it?” As though to prove a point, Steve rises from his bed, shaky on his feet, but not faltering, and slips into his bathroom. Tony and Sam wait in awkward silence, exchanging furtive looks. Sam’s eyes say, You better fucking take care of him, you prick, and Tony’s eyes say, If he’ll let me. From the bathroom, they hear a flush and the sound of water running. After a moment, Steve pops his head out the door, looking embarrassed and self-loathing. “I don’t…the soap,” he says helplessly, holding up his wet left hand. Sam steps in and helps him scrub it off, guiding him back to the bed once they’ve finished. Steve won’t meet their eyes, instead focusing on folding tiny pleats into the top sheet. Tony and Sam share another silent conversation and then the ex-pararescue shakes himself off, as though ridding himself of the tension in the room.  
  
He smirks at the both of them and then stands away from the wall. “I’m gonna text everyone and let them know you’re up. Bruce figured once you woke, we could transfer you back to the States and take care of everything else there. The doctor said the healing is already well along. The scar tissue is so far along it looks like you’ve been laid up a few weeks already.”  
  
Tony can see the way Steve’s face shutters as Sam glides out the door, but he leans in so the super soldier can’t avoid eye contact.  
  
“I’ve got some things I want to say,” he says once the door swings closed.  
  
Steve’s blue eyes are unrepentant, his mouth set in one long line of stubborn. “Go on. You’re angry, aren’t you? But I’d do it again. I’d…I know what I promised, but…”  
  
“That’s what I want to talk about,” Tony says, drawing closer. “I…I shouldn’t have asked you what I did. It was unfair of me.”  
  
Something in the super soldier’s face falls a little, his shoulders drooping just a touch.  
  
“Steve,” Tony says, reaching out to touch his jaw, “Our lives, our jobs, we can never promise each other we’re coming back. Shit happens on the battlefield, things we never expect. I shouldn’t have, I shouldn’t have made you feel like you were obligated. I mean, the people we’re protecting, they’ll always come first, right? That’s…stop me now. I’m totally fucking this up. Just shut me up.”  
  
Under long lashes, Steve’s gaze is hesitant, almost cautious. “You’re not mad I went and got myself almost killed?”  
  
“From what Natasha said, it was kind of unavoidable. I’m not mad at you for protecting Nat and Barnes. I’m not mad at you for being Captain America down to your core.”  
  
“Just a kid from Brooklyn,” Steve murmurs, sitting up a little, drawing nearer to Tony.  
  
“My favorite kid from Brooklyn,” Tony says, and leans in to give him a soft kiss. Steve hums under his lips, tilting his head ever so slightly so that their noses are at a less awkward angle. For a moment, they just hold it, and then fabric rustles and Steve pulls away with another grimace. His eyes drop to his arm, to the bandages and twitching muscle. He studies it for a moment, and then shifts his gaze to Tony’s leg, swathed in hospital gown, and a frisson of anger lights in his eyes. Tony leans in to try and distract him from what he suspects is coming next, but Steve turns his head at the last second, taking the kiss on his cheekbone instead.  
  
“I,” he says after a moment, “am very angry with you.”  
  
Tony leans back a little and hunches his shoulders, looking away. He gathers himself for a moment, but can’t quite find a defense, so he remains silent.  
  
“Are you going to be like that every time I’m on a long-term mission? It’s not healthy, Tony. You need sleep. You need food. When I’m out of town, you’re default team leader and we can’t have you failing on the battlefield because…”  
  
“I’m not going to be like this every time. Geeze. Jump down my throat, why don’t you?”  
  
“What was it then? You know you have responsibilities. Were you having nightmares? This…it’s unacceptable. Why didn’t you tell anyone?”  
  
Tony grimaces a little. “There may have been nightmares,” he murmurs, turning slightly away from Steve.  
  
“You,” Steve says after a moment, “are an idiot.”  
  
“Your idiot.”  
  
“I’m enlisting JARVIS. I’m going to lock you out of your computers. You are going to sleep at least six hours a day. You are going to eat three squares with a balance of fruits and vegetables and all the healthy foods you hate. You are mmph…”  
  
Tony grins against Steve’s lips, because even though Steve is angry with him, Tony is mostly just glad to have his super soldier awake and back to his cantankerous self. “You are such a mother hen,” he murmurs as he pulls away.  
  
“Look who’s talking,” Steve says, giving Tony a quick once over. He smiles, just the slightest tug of his lips, and then turns to look out the window. “Where are we, anyway? That’s not New York.”  
  
“Singapore. Closest SHIELD base was here.”  
  
Steve gazes at the orange glow of the skyline. It’s cloudy out, and the city sends light pollution out against the masses of water vapor, drowning everything in permanent twilight. The super soldier is thoughtful for a moment, lips pursing and brow creasing, face thrown into sharp relief by the lamplight.  
  
“Ok,” he says after a moment, turning back to Tony. “We make new promises. Ones we can keep.”  
  
“I’m making promises now, too?”  
  
“You’re damn right you are. Two days with no sleep. Honestly. What the fuck is wrong with you?”  
  
“Do you want me to answer that?”  
  
Steve shakes his head sharply and says, “Promise me when I’m away, you’ll get help for yourself. Whatever you need to make the nightmares go away. Hell, crawl into bed with Thor if you need to, but promise me you’ll get sleep and at least attempt to feed yourself.”  
  
“Thor sleeps in the nude,” Tony says, hands playing with the hem of his robe.  
  
“Tony.”  
  
“Ok. Fine. I promise. I’ll, I’ll pester people when I can’t sleep. And I’ll program JARVIS to give me increasingly annoying food reminders. I’ll have him play recordings of the hearing with Senator Stern or something.” Tony pouts a little and then looks down at Steve’s hand, still worrying at the sheet. “And what are you promising me, soldier boy?”  
  
Steve’s gaze is fiercely determined when he looks up, and after a moment, he plants his fingers over Tony’s chest. The dog tags click together under his grip, reassuring in their steel hardness. “I promise…I don’t know what.” He looks lost all of a sudden, looks more like he’s nineteen than twenty-nine. “What do you need me to promise.”  
  
The inventor takes in Steve’s slumped shoulders, his rudderless expression, and the words come out of him as though from another person entirely. “Promise me you won’t let this beat you.”  
  
The super soldier glances down at his stump of an arm, flexes the muscles purposefully and watches as it swings uselessly at his side. “I’m…I’m gonna need some help,” he says after a moment. “I don’t…Tony, I…”  
  
“No. The words I want to hear are, ‘I promise.’ That’s what I need from you right now.”  
  
Steve looks up, his expression equal parts frustration and terror, “What if I can’t promise that?”  
  
“Are you telling me Steve Rogers, the punk who tried to enlist six separate occasions, 4F be damned, the kid from Brooklyn who ignored orders from his commanding officer to go out and rescue hundreds of men, the soldier who punched Hitler over two hundred times, is going to give up?” Tony’s smiling gently, but he’s also dead serious.  
  
The blonde looks down again, draws a deep breath that expands his chest in all directions, and then meets Tony’s gaze, diamond in his eyes. “I promise.”  
  
“That’s the Steve Rogers I know,” Tony says, his smile sharp and satisfied. They stare at each other a little longer before Tony turns abruptly and flops his torso down next to Steve’s. “And it’s not like I’m not going to build you the greatest prosthesis ever known to man. You’re not in this alone, remember?”  
  
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Steve says, curling his good arm around Tony’s shoulders. And even though they should both be wide awake with all the rest they’ve accumulated, it takes only five peaceful minutes before they drift off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Before you all ask, there will be a third installment. This just felt like the right place to finish this part off. I did not think this story was going to become as involved as it has, but I'm enjoying writing it.
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](http://arukou-arukou.tumblr.com/) for snippets, drabbles, and nerdery.


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